How To Customize Airtable By Integrating Sociocractic Principles & Processes
Organizations using Sociocracy as their system of governance can customize Airtable to meet all of their digital collaboration needs.
Why Airtable?
In modern Sociocratic organizations, there is often a great deal of digital collaboration and data management required for the group to function smoothly. Airtable is a project management tool that can be completely customized to suit an organization’s needs and to fully integrate sociocratic principles and processes. You can read more about Airtable here.
This is an example of a dashboard layout. Dashboards (or interfaces) in Airtable can be customized to show important data in real time, such as all of the information relevant to a particular circle.
How Does Using Airtable Reinforce Sociocratic Principles?
Sociocracy For All lists three main principles of Sociocracy on their website: Empowerment & Equity, Connection & Consideration, & Efficiency & Effectiveness. Using Airtable to support your organization's administration can reinforce all of these principles.
Empowerment & Equity - Airtable is a collaboration software that is accessed entirely online. Everyone in your organization can be given access to it and permission levels can be set accordingly. There are also countless ways to share data from Airtable publicly including by sharing views, granting read-only access, and embedding Airtable elements into websites. This level of transparency reinforces the Sociocractic principle of empowerment and equity by centralizing an organization's data and allowing everyone to contribute simultaneously.
Connection & Consideration - Airtable allows everyone to access whatever they need, whenever they need it. It serves as a central repository for everything from meeting notes, to resources, to the community calendar, and more. It is also user-friendly and accessible via your web browser which makes it easier for anyone to jump into.
Efficiency & Effectiveness - Using Airtable to track an organization's data allows you to structure the system to best suit your needs. You can make it as simple or as complicated as you need and constantly refine it. This reinforces yet another key component of Sociocracy "good enough for now, safe enough to try" because your digital infrastructure is consistently tweaked to reflect the shifting needs of your organization.
How Sociocracy Can Be Woven Into Airtable
There are countless ways that Airtable can be customized to weave in Sociocratic principles and processes. Below I have detailed a handful of ways that this has been done in organizations using Sociocracy. It is important to note that because of the way Airtable is designed, all of these elements can inter-link and connect with each other. The more they are woven together, the more comprehensive and useful your digital infrastructure is.
Organizational Manual - having a centralized manual for your community makes it easy to onboard new team members as well as give existing members a starting place if they need to look into something.
Resource Logging & Index - no matter how many resources an organization has, there are always more that come along. Airtable lets you save all of these resources (be they links, documents, photos, etc.) in one place and connect them to any other item in your system. For example, you can link any number of resources to a particular meeting or task so that any time that meeting or task is reviewed, the person can see all of the resources that were relevant to it. This not only makes updating resources a breeze (updating them once will update them no matter where else they are connected) but also means you always have what you need at your fingertips.
Tracking Tasks & Timelines - there is so much that needs to be done in any organization. Having centralized tasks that are connected to a larger timeline can be a powerful management tool. A task can be logged directly from meeting notes (for example) and be automatically added to the overall timeline. Airtable can be set up to notify team members of new tasks or if a deadline is coming up. You can also set up any number of views of your tasks depending on need and preference. If one team member prefers Kan-Ban style tasks management and another prefers a Gantt chart, they can both have views set up to their exact specifications. Finally, you can set up views that show all the tasks for a particular circle or role.
Calendars & Events - you can track all of your events in one centralized calendar and then set up views that filter the events accordingly. For example, you can have a different calendar view set up for each circle or even each team member and have them all synced up to one master calendar. This allows you to track all of your event information in one place such as date and time started, meeting agenda and notes, attendees, associated resources, tasks, and much more. Each event has its own record where all of the relevant information is saved and synced up to other tables. This makes it a breeze for the circle administrator to take notes and for the facilitator to facilitate since they are always looking at the same information that updates in real time. The facilitator can even shift the agenda in real time by editing agenda item duration, order, or content while in the midst of a meeting. Everything that is done in Airtable can also be visualized and even exported as needed so if, for example, you want to create beautifully formatted meeting minutes the data can be tracked in Airtable then automatically formatted into your formal meeting minute template.
Decision Log - decision-making is a key function of sociocracy. Having a centralized decision log means that any time any decision is made it is linked and saved back to the same place. The leader can prepare decisions before a circle meeting and then the circle administrator can mark the decision as approved, tabled, rejected, etc. while taking notes, thereby updating the decision log and taking notes simultaneously.
Contact & Group Tracking - there are often many people and groups (internal and external to an organization) that need to be tracked. Having a log specifically for them means that all event attendees can be pulled from that list or that they can be assigned tasks and have a view set up just for them. It also means that you can track circles, sub-circles, and roles all in the same place and make sure that they stay updated across your database. When new circles are formed or change their names all of that can be tracked in the contact and group log. You can also use this data to set up an organizational chart that updates in real time or to track and assign roles and get alerts when the time for role selections is drawing near.
Budgets & Expense Tracking - there are many administrative functions in a sociocratic organization but recording expenses and making and managing budgets is always an important one. This log allows you to have all of your organization’s spending tracked in one place and you can set up forms for team members to submit new expense reports or to request that something be added to their circle's budget. It also allows whichever circle is responsible for administering the finances and budget to see exactly what the organizations expenses are and how they compare to their planned budget.
Proposals - proposals are another major mechanism in Sociocracy so having a system that allows you to form and track proposals can be a huge time-saver. You can set up Airtable to allow you to collaboratively go through the proposal forming process, save a draft of your proposal, allow you to refine your proposal without changing the original draft, and create a final proposal all in the same place.
Circle Log - circle logs are a key tool because they are where all of the information relevant to a circle is tracked. Airtable makes creating and maintaining circle logs a breeze. They can be set up to automatically update with the most current information. Here are some of the elements in a circle log that can be tracked using Airtable:
Circle Overview - this allows all of the key information about a circle to be found in one place such as the aim, domain, team members, roles, its position on the community's org chart, the circle's schedule, decisions made by the circle, resources relevant to the circle, circle proposals, and more, all in the same place.
Circle Meetings - you can see and edit all of your circle's meetings and events in one place as well as all of the information relevant to that event such as the date and time started, the date and time completed, the event duration, any events that directly follow or are directly related to this event, an event summary, any proposals discussed, any relevant tasks or milestones, the agenda, meeting notes, any decisions proposed and their status, attendees, and comments.
Circle Strategic Plan - it is always helpful for any circle to have a strategic plan to guide their work and timeline. This dashboard allows circle members to see what high-level milestones the circle is working on or working towards and what their statuses are.
Circle Tasks - you can see all of the circles tasks (or just the incomplete tasks) in one place, sorted and organized however you'd prefer. You can also see all of the information related to that task including but not limited to the date started, date completed, who's responsible for the task, what circle that task falls under, a description, the priority level, any resources associated with it, any tasks or milestones that are dependent on it, and any decisions associated with it.
Circle Resources - all of the resources that a circle uses, creates, or references regularly can be accessed and searched in the same place.
Circle Role Dashboards - you can set up dashboards for each role which include the role's term, tasks & responsibilities, who is holding the role, and any other information specific to that role. This makes it easy to hand off the role when someone new is selected as they can be given this dashboard as their primary resource.
Circle Member Dashboards - similar to role dashboards, circle member dashboards can be created for each circle member so that they can always see what tasks they have been assigned, what they should be working towards, relevant resources, and anything else that they want to have access to while participating in the circle.
Other Dashboards - you can create a dashboard for any purpose in Airtable so if you wanted to have a different dashboard for each member of your team where they could save information relevant to them, see all their tasks, see what is coming up for them this week, track there time, and more, this can be easily set up and customized.
There are so many more ways that Airtable can be set up to integrate Sociocracy or simply document whatever your organization needs to track. If you want help figuring out how to set up a new system in Airtable, please reach out!